i thought i was alone. this place, a private spot where i often come to look out over the ocean and think, to talk to the sky and say the things that cannot anywhere else be said.
she stood there, upon the cliff’s edge, her back to me and yet, somehow, she knew i was there. i could see her shoulders drop slightly in non-verbal acknowledgment.
i paused, waited, and listened. without turning, she spoke to me, “it is cruel and lonely, is it not?” i said nothing, knowing the unspoken reference and that the question was rhetorical. “i have heard your many words, over years, in dreams and in waking. i came here to look from this spot where you so often stand…. to remember…. and to forget.”
i noticed the manner in which the light breeze rippled her presence, that gentle shimmy implying transience. i moved no closer.
i heard the sigh and my eyes followed her upward pointing, to the twilight expanse with its first glimmering stars, “angelstern is ringed with your many wishes. most of them are too light and lofty to find their way back to you. you know this, yet you continue visiting, sending them.”
“yes,” i murmured quietly, “it is a known thing.” she turned slowly to me, her silver hair ruffled slightly and her presence rippled with the movement, “you had a question…” she said, the uninflected voice made no judgment and offered nothing. she simply stood there, waiting, as if i was supposed to know what to do or say.
there was no indication of time. we might have been there a moment. we might have been there lifetimes. i nodded, “i had one, yes.” the silence after the statement stretched and expanded and passed into nothingness.
the lines and folds of an ancient face in which olive eyes alone were unchanged looked at me with something akin to kindness, marked by more than a little sadness, “i wish i could tell you it would change.”
she stood quietly as the many layers of meaning drifted and settled over me. i felt the weight of them briefly, memories i had not yet lived, whose true heaviness were yet to be known.
i nodded, walking carefully closer and watching her translucence increase, “i’ve always preferred truth to lies.” i watched the glittering droplet trace a slow line down her cheek as i drew near. i reached to touch it and she dissolved; a slow, undulating mist that faded from sight.
i stood alone, there, upon the precipice, and let the wetness upon my fingertips dry in the wind.